


Runaways

by Fuoco



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: AU, Child Abandonment, M/M, No Camp AU, Past Child Abuse, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-31 01:31:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3959365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuoco/pseuds/Fuoco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Kill the Greek Or I will - and I will not be as quick."</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>The boy looked towards the trees before looking back at Leo - his blue eyes wide, apologetic, but certain. His pale hand turned even paler as he raised his spear high above  his head - and pauses.</i></p><p> </p><p>AU where Leo and Jason meet ahead of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaways

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for child abuse in this chapter.

 The rain, which seemed to start the moment he was free - the moment he fought his way from the Nun' bruising grips and out the orphanage's front door into the dark of night, was refreshing down to the bottoms of his bare feet. It reminds him of water-hoses on hot concrete, but just like every memory of his one and only home' more painful ones come attached.  So he ran and kept running until the trees got thicker. Till the dark was absolute. Till everything was quiet.It wasn't until he stopped, until his breathing was quiet, that Leo remembered that night was never so quiet - not even in the woods. The leaves did not rustle and the rain splashed quietly for its weight on his shoulders. His gut tells him to turn back but something deeper tells him to go forward. He thinks of the adults in black, the cold crosses - out in the dark, chasing him like he's the devil - and knows he does not have a choice.Leo takes several steps forward into the silence and gets the sense he's passed a barrier. Beyond it Leo is overwhelmed by clarity - something was true in that space and Leo's whole body knew it. There was also a burning unlike what he could create that told him he was unwelcome.A growl in the distance breaks the silence and Leo is forced to remember the forest has wolves. More carefully, he advances.When Leo sees the broken mansion in a distant clearing it looks like he'd already been there. Its a castle of blackened brick with green fighting through levels of old ash. When he runs his hands against the crumbling walls it feels like rubbing a used match on a naked strike-board.  Whatever happened here, however long ago, Leo feels comforted by the notion that there's nothing worse he can do to the place, and settles himself in the reasonably dry, grassy corner of what once may have been a room. He rests to the cadence of raindrops on time-worn bricks.No more than a moment after Leo closes his eyes does the silence break once more. Again, it is a growl but, to Leo's panic, sounds much closer, and is accompanied by even odder sounds - both familiar to a wolfs growl and to something Leo cant place.It is not until Leo is fully woken by a strike of lighting that he recognizes the older noise as a boy in distress. Again, against his gut but in line with the deeper feeling, he runs to it.Leo stops short when the sounds are only yards away an hides in the dark behind a crumbling figure. There is motion in the dilapidated atrium of the ruins. Leo takes the motion for several animals scuffling before he catches sight of a shine off metal and a glow on pale skin and takes a closer look.A young boy, as young as Leo who was not yet seven, was fighting a wolf. There was a practiced viciousness in the way he used the long, odd weapon to attack. However it seemed insufficient against the wolf's vicious nature. The wolf would claw him bloody and he would yell in frustration more than fear. Sometimes the boy would fall to all fours and fight like the wolf but the wolf, if wolves could be displeased, was and he stood up again with his weapon.Leo, who could not reconcile the idea of training from animal to man instead of the reverse, only saw a boy in danger. As he weighed his options - surveying his surrounding for a sizeable stick - his left foot set to heavily on a twig. The snap, loud in the quiet space, was a billion times worse than the large splinter it had impailed him with - Leo only barely caught his yell. When he looks back into the clearing both the boy and the wolf have dissapeared.A hand grabs his shoulder and throws him down before he can react. The long metal weapon, which Leo recognizes is a spear, hovers with its tip at his heart."Graecius." The boy says it low and mean, like an insult. He catches the eyes of the wolf shining near the edge of the trees before he looks at the boy and his gaze is trapped. The boy's eyes are blue and intense and terrifying. He stands over Leo, feet in the mud on either side of his waist, the rain that hits the back of his head runs down before dropping off his cheeks like tears. The boy repeats his insult and speaks in a language Leo doesn't recognize before devolving into growls and  hums that do not sound like a human language at all."'Easy..." Leo placated. He was reminded of the time an abused dog got loose on his apartment floor in Texas, how his mom protected herself, Leo, and the neighbors little twins by calming the dog down - not hurting it more or running like the neighbors screamed for her to behind the safety of their doors. Leo put his hands up and out like she did and the boy finally blinked.The clarity Leo felt when he first entered the space returned as his panic ebbed away. Under its influence he heard the wolf growl from the trees and, just for a second, understood _her_ meaning: _"_ _Kill_   _the_ _Greek._ _Or_   _I_   _will_ _._ I  _will_   _not_   _be_ _as_ _quick_ _."_ The boy looked towards the trees before looking back at Leo - blue eyes wide, apologetic, but certain. His pale hand turned even paler as he raised his spear high above  his head - and pauses.Leo doesn't understand until he sees his hands-his knees-every inch of his body beginning to glow. The edges of his ripped clothing began to smoke and Leo remembers he is not his mother.Using the pause, Leo sets his palm against the bare part of the boy's leg - it doesn't take a second for the flesh to boil. He only barely flinches, but its enough for Leo to roll from under him and slap the spear into the mud. He tries not to think of the wolf in the trees as he runs as fast and as far as he can.The rain cools Leos body down and its dark again. When he slows down his breathing the noises of rain and nature takes over. There is nothing behind him or in front but even if there was he couldn't run any farther - the splinter has his foot throbbing in pain and his skinny knees collapse right there in the cold mud. Its then that Leo considers that of he wasn't killed by what chased him from the orphanage or from the ruins, he might just die anyways.Leos ears just barely catch the sound of a twig breaking and imagines the slow claws and bite of a wolf or a quick spear in a child's hands and decides it doesn't matter."Protect me, our father," he hears in a woman's voice, and wishes for the spear.* _"_ _Do_   _not_   _return_   _until_   _he_   _is_   _dead_ _._ _Greeks_   _must_   _never_   _know_ _of_ _this_   _place_ _."_ With Lupa's orders in mind, Jason took off from the wolf house. The burn on his leg smarted with every step, but even though the boy caused him pain he didn't feel angry. He wondered about the boy who was able to intrude on Lupa's sanctuary. Who spoke a language Jason faintly recognized. Who set his own curly hair and clothing on fire in the middle of the rain and could burn skin with just his palm.Others find Leo before Jason.They lift him from the mud , dousing him in buckets of water and striking him with crossed sticks when he glowed that smoked against his hot skin, chanting as he shouts for them to let him go, for help. It brings up Jason's memory of a park, a glowing woman, of feeling alone. Of several words a loved one taught him to protect himself that did not work against the goddess who then owned him. His mother had ignored him when he'd called for her and there was no one else around to listen.Then there was Jason now, listening to the boy's calls for help and doing nothing at all.He's woken from his thoughts as they take the boy farther away. Jason follows.*The last thing Leo sees is his least favorite nun bringing down a sizeable wooden cross right on his head. The first thing he hears when he starts to wake up is 'crematorium'.When he finally gets his eyes open he sees all the nuns and pastors and the priest looking down at him with scared, determined looks. He feels dust on his back, a fire at his feet and cuffs on both of his wrists. The priest looks away from Leo to the rest of the adults who'd sworn to God to protect Leo, and the closed his eyes."May god have mercy on us all." Leo is pushed into the coffin of fire.It doesn't take a second for Leo to burn through the cuffs, but a second is already too late. The lid above his head locks shut in an instant. The fire around him does not burn his body - feels as comfortable as the fireplace he slept in as a child - but it does not matter because oxygen burns fast and Leo will die long before his hands can burn through the door.With no oxygen available for screaming, Leo curls up in his side in the dust. He thinks of mother, of a burning garage, of his aunt who would pray when Leo came near and sent him to the church in the first place. Maybe his aunt had known he'd show himself to the nuns, and how the nuns would react, and how they'd kill him just like this - just like his mother. But his mother had burned while Leo was comfortable and Leo deserved worse where she deserved to live.He taps his mother a message on the hot brick as the heat steals his exhale before it leaves his body. Leo thinks about seeing her again.Suddenly its cool and Leo can breathe. A small hand grabs the collar of his singed shirt and pulls him from the fire. Leo falls to the rain-damp floor and heaves - expelling as much of the wet ash from inside of him as possible while trying to get air to replace it.Something clatters to the floor and Leo looks up - it was the boy from before. He was stumbling, holding his pink burned left hand close to his chest, groaning in agony. He shoves something from his pocket into his mouth and Leo watches as the blisters on his hands fade to nothing. The scratches from the wolf and Leos burn on his thigh fade as well, but the Leo's hand-print is the only injury to leave a scar.Leo heaves again, his breathing stopping completely as he continues almost blacking him out. Moving quickly the boy grabs his shoulders, putting something in Leo's own mouth that looks like candy but tastes like pudding.When Leo wakes - he passed out after all - he feels brand new. Hes lying behind the boy who's watches a door - spear in hand. Without turning, the boy turns and says something in Latin that Leo doesn't understand. He sits up the boy turns around. The sun is rising an Leo can make out his blue eyes, light blond hair, and a small pink scar on his lips. The spear in his hand would be obvious in the dark. He moved forward and Leo puts his arms up in defense. Instead of dying, Leo is tapped lightly on the shoulder.

 

_"Omittamus."  
_


End file.
